All of these companies seem to do their best to make easy things hard!!
SWMBOs Vodafone SIM only deal is up for renewal at month end. We don't want to renew it.
I just wanted to make sure I don't have to give 30 days notice.
90 minutes later, after an interrupted chat session with 4 people, and having to give the same info over and over, I now know (or at least I think I know) that I don't, if I am transferring to another provider - simply activating the PAC will cause cancellation but I have to do it on the last day of the contract - any earlier will cause a £9+ disconnection charge.
I was told I should stay because they have some "amazing offers". However they can't tell me what the offers are till my last day, which is really too late.
Plus of course another 5 minutes typing it up for here!!
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>>Vodafone
I’m with them. Went from paying for a phone and sim purchased through a broker in 2019 (an excellent deal at the time), to SIM only.
Just after my contract ended they emailed me an offer for a 20gb per month SIM upgraded to 120gb for £20 but as I had been a customer for 2 years I could get it for £14.
I wasn’t in the mood to shop around so went for it.
In reality, getting the offer on their website or in person via their call centres proved far more difficult than it ought to. I think it took over 3 hours in total.
It would have been easier to go elsewhere!
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6 years ago a granddaughter was given phone on a Vodafone contract.
3 years ago she got a better deal on a new phone via Mobiles.co.uk(Carphone Warehouse Co.)
to change from Vodafone contract to Vodafone contract via Mobiles - PIA but my son managed it in about 2 hours.
Last month it was change contract of contract time again - sim only with Vodafone - 3 hours and my son lost the place. He made his daughter change her phone number. He was tempted to just move her to SKY mobile and tell Vodafone to p--- - off
Why does a company, like Vodafone, go out of their way to make life so difficult for loyal customers? My son has 4 family phones with Vodafone and has been with them for 25 years - I would have walked.
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Have you requested the PAC (code)? If you're out of contract about 30 minutes later you'll get a phone call from "Retentions", who are able to offer a genuinely good deal.
Don't bother with the online chat, they'll say and do anything to get commission but can't actually give you what they promise.
I'm on a 55% ongoing discount with Vodafone at the moment, including global roaming and Spotify.
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Not requested it yet but I will.
The risk of waiting till I'm out of contract is that their deal isn't as good as I can get elsewhere. Retentions weren't able to even give me an indication of what they might offer.
SWMBO will be overwhelmed with 18Gb data and EU roaming on a monthly plan with ID for £8.
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>> GIFFGAFF is your friend.
only if you want to pay your friend more than you need to.
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>> >> GIFFGAFF is your friend.
>>
>> only if you want to pay your friend more than you need to.
>>
What is the Zero Best Buy SIM?
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I had a bad experience with Vodafone some time ago, I won't go back to them. Perhaps there is a reason why they are cheap?
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>> I had a bad experience with Vodafone some time ago
Me too. I had a spare phone with a Vodafone PAYG SIM in it with £10 credit on it. The phone was regularly switched on, but not used to make calls. One day the £10 credit vanished. Upon checking with Vodafone, if the phone isn't used after a period of time (to make calls), then they remove any credit.
A friend was telling me that EE had disconnected his PAYG SIM because he hadn't used it for a month. Credit gone and everything. He phoned them up and they enabled the SIM again, and put £10 onto the account as a goodwill gesture!!!! Then told him to make sure he uses the phone at least once a month to make a call.
I don't expect to put a sum of money into a savings account in a bank, for the bank to then nick the money because I haven't spent it after a period of time.
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>> A friend was telling me that EE had disconnected his PAYG SIM because he hadn't
>> used it for a month. Credit gone and everything. He phoned them up and they
>> enabled the SIM again, and put £10 onto the account as a goodwill gesture!!!! Then
>> told him to make sure he uses the phone at least once a month to
>> make a call.
I believe this is quite common. It's one thing if you are aware of it, but if you are not...
Tesco SIM only don't do it. I have old phones with a Tesco SIM in each car as a back up.
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>> Tesco SIM only don't do it. I have old phones with a Tesco SIM in
>> each car as a back up.
I don't think 3 do either. I've kept a small balance on a 3 PAYG Sim that was bought for use in the States. Not been their recently though I was using it for work in 2020/21.
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>>
>> A friend was telling me that EE had disconnected his PAYG SIM because he hadn't
>> used it for a month. Credit gone and everything. He phoned them up and they
>> enabled the SIM again, and put £10 onto the account as a goodwill gesture!!!! Then
>> told him to make sure he uses the phone at least once a month to
>> make a call.
>>
...I have a pre-paid 120GB/12 Month EE SIM in a MiFi, which I use in the Motorhome. It hasn't been used over-much since being activated some 6 months ago, due to both the season, and WiFi availability where we've been.
A couple of weeks ago, it refused to connect in the Yorkshire Dales (or more correctly, it connected but refused to allow data).
When I got home, I contacted EE via webchat, and was given a similar story about it having expired through non-use, ("you must top-up at least 6-monthly") but the op promptly re-activated for me anyway.
Given I've got it back, I'm not going to make too much of a song and dance about it, but the 180 day top-up rule is patently nonsense for a pre-paid 12 month card. The Ts&Cs actually state that you must either use it or top up every 180 days; it had been used quite a bit in February, so something's wrong somewhere!
(Use it or lose it is quite common on pre-pay/PAYG SIMS).
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>> ...I have a pre-paid 120GB/12 Month EE SIM in a MiFi, which I use in
>> the Motorhome.
Thought about installing a mifi with 4g/5g antenna on the roof, but I cant justify it. The Phone, with personal hotspot, placed up in the roof vent does exactly the same job, without the hassle of two data plans
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...the MiFi works reasonably well without an extra antenna (though it does have connectors for one).
The combination of that (with a decent amount of annual data) and the 'phone with a more limited amount of monthly data, works well for us, as they are on different Networks*.
(*Useful in the UK, but more so in Europe, as the roaming arrangements vary by original network, and coverage can be quite patchy).
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I’m always surprised in these threads as to how much data people buy and use each month. In these days of near universal Wi-Fi at home and in hotels, pubs, shops,bars and restaurants I struggle to use more than 3GB. What do people use it on? I can only assume streaming music and videos on the move.
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In my case you are right, I barely use any data. I'm on a 100Gb plan which rolls over each month (for one month only) and generally I start the new month with over 195Gb of data. It only costs me £8 a month so seemed worth it at the time, as you never know. For me, that's about as much as I want to spend, and many at that price will cover my needs, so I tend to go for the best I can at that moment in time, as deals change frequently.
I did use the phone as a hot spot in Portugal to stream some telly when the local WiFi was struggling a bit, but that's unusual. Also some public WiFi isn't usable - Faro airport WiFi was hopeless the other day, probably just needed a router reboot.
In terms of the best SIM only deal, if you want to contract direct with the provider I find ID or Plusnet are generally fairly hard to beat, and having used both and been happy they are my "go to" providers. Both offer monthly deals so if you don't like it for some reason or a much better deal comes along you can easily bail out.
Lebara and Smarty also seem to be fairly cheap but I have no experience of them.
If you don't mind the faff of claiming cashbacks every few months the comparison sites can often offer you a good deal for any of the major providers, but generally either 12 or 24 months only. My 100Gb is with mobiles.co.uk on a Vodafone plan, so I pay Vodafone £16 pm but claim back (I think) £24 every three months (which isn't so difficult) but when it reaches the end of it's term I'll need to find another one otherwise I'll just continue paying Vodafone but get nothing back from mobiles.co.uk.
I am putting SWMBO on a monthly deal with ID - £8 for 16Gb incl EU roaming, which is important to us.
If you are planning to use your phone abroad you would want to check wither EU roaming is included - e.g. with Vodafone some plans have it and some don't. I think O2 are charging £2 a day for it.
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>> What is the Zero Best Buy SIM?
Its not the Best Buy by any means, I am on 30gb data, UL calls/txt for 10 quid a month on Tesco, no price rise during contract.
And to answer the question, what do you use 30gb data for? Streaming Spotify in the car, live streaming dog training up on to the web, and wifi hotspot in the caravan, Sorry CCV, inc the FireStick in the tele.
Dont use it all the time for sure, rollover would be nice, but it meets my requirements.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 11 Apr 22 at 10:15
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Today - Vodafone - zippy
